


Baker Tower

by Nope



Category: 221B Baker Towers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 11:10:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21493333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: London is his balm, his bane.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Baker Tower

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keerawa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keerawa/gifts).

_ i. this is my arena _

"20 DEAD IN DITCH" screams the Daily Mail. Toxic printer's ink, inedible, wrapped around chips.

"Lookit." John spits disgust. "Twunts."

Sherlock, hands deeper in his pockets, rolls his shoulders. "Not ditch. A 'ha-ha'; keeps out the cattle."

Sun, Express, Telegraph chorus: "Triads! Immigrants! Coming for YOUR CHILDREN!"

"Nah, nah, nah," Sherlock scoffs. "Don't they got eyes?"

"Trafficking gone wrong, innit?" John says. "We'd'a heard, blood was up. You would've heard. Gang war's bollocks."

"Someone's bollocks," Sherlock says, swallows the grin that threatens to match John's rising beam. "Yeah, yeah. Fuck off with the puppy eyes. Nothing better to do, 'sall."

_ Ii.just about a mile from here _

2°c flashing on the Alavo billboard. Breath foggy, human exhaust. Now 88:88, 88:82, 88:85, indiscernibly fast, but a _pattern_. London's beat in his feet, lead in his pencil. Billboards, cheap LEDs. Broken cameras not broken observation, memoization. Dog shit, taxi treads. Briefcases, backpacks, umbrellas. Bruise under collar. Expensive tie. Cheap watch. Two hundred paces here, twenty there, one back. Cat hair, cuff. Lipstick, knuckles. John's tired trainer squeak, Saint Bart's marble floors. Molly, square jaw, awkward feet, rushing them in with embarrassed glee. Infinite, infinitesimal, interlaced. Patterns, gaps, the gaps in the patterns: these lead to truth.

_ iii. educated by Eastenders _
    
    
      1diff
    

comes chiming in. Lestrade, trying to tie her hair back one handed, curses. Unknown number, known by its unknown, dings again before she can reply.
    
    
    haircut/tats postmortem
    eyes bloody
    oths coke/latex res
    him£££skincream

And there's a bloody picture as well. Lestrade strikes every letter venomously. 
    
    
      ur in morgue right now?!
    

John texts like a professor. 
    
    
      Molly says to say hello, Inspector.
    

"Gods fucking preserve me." And then its Sherlock again, machine gun observations, deconstructing her job-seeking hell scenario, building one that looks more drug dealership clean up with an anomalous body dropped on top. Fuck her life.

_ iv. make homes out of human beings _

Big crime, big business, big brother; everyone always looking big. But life, Sherlock says, is the fucking details bruv. 

"Someone knew the dealer was hit, dumped their own in to blend, innit?" John says, looking pleased with himself.

"Ain't three places sell lotion smells like that," Sherlock says.

He makes calls, received pronunciation, manager smooth. Then they hang in an alley, get smokes bummed, wrangle a name. More calls now, bored Jobcentre Plus callback, irate landlord, worried boyfriend, putting names on faces, flesh on bones, life on the dead.

Daniel Park, dosses in a bedsit, spends forty quid on moisturiser.

_ v. the custard is worthless _

Leads fizzle into noise. He finds the right business, bars, but. London is enveloping, cacophonous, braggadocio to a beat. This is what he loves, what he hates sometimes. City song, yes, but screaming indifference too. Everything crashing, crushing together. Bricked out, hedged in, buoyed down, tied up, nowhere to just be. Just, half caught in the shape of it, all lost, panting wildly on a street corner, heart breaking his fucking ribs--!

_Yaw. Dwa. Drey,_ John counts, hands over Sherlock's ears, foreheads pressed together. _Celour. Penza. Shpeg._ Breathing for Sherlock. Not all is lost. Not this.

Always one more option.

_ vi. we spoke of was and when _

Once, Sherlock says “I’m not a whore.”

“Fuck's free.” Moriarty counts crisp fifties out with languid grace. “Conversation, I pay for.”

“Not your whore,” Sherlock — what? Clarifies? Contradicts?

Moriarty sing-songs. “What constitutes a prostitute is the pursuit of profit.” 

Sherlock swallows retorts, tastes come.

“Too Yankee, baby?” The drawl is a Texan mockery. Moriarty was naked, liquid, sprawled; now silk pours across skin that never holds a bruise. “You and me, Sherlock. Angels of the morning, demons in the noon, ever consumed by beating off the gloom.”

Laughter accompanies an exit. Sherlock stretches; cuts re-open. Moriarty's left a note.

_ vii. breathe deep, cry out _

Nobody looks twice at black, bruv saying, bomber wearing, Deliveroo bag lift entrance. Nobody looks twice at black, head nodding, cheap suit, nylon tie, scuffed suitcase lift exit. Invisible is visible but less, freedom sting of dismissal. Alavo sells chemicals. Ammonia permeates even administrative offices. Sherlock doesn't breathe. Top floor windows might open but not here in middle management. This

__

  * furniture frames empty wall, missing photo
  * suit expensive, watch cheap, plastic, kept sentimental
  * knuckles swelling, back issues
  * reddened nostrils, eyes, breath, addict, briefly clean, using

__

is the killer, damn it. Just skipped to the end, no problem at all. Boring.

_ viii.sick and tired of waiting to exhale _

"Daniel Park was your lover," Sherlock says.

"Partner." He smiles mistily. "So beautiful. A rose among the shit."

"Your company -- anhydrous ammonia, iodine..."

"Clandestine chemistry." A bitter laugh. "Daniel hated it. Said narcotics rot the estates. So I-- I--"

"You tried to stop. And they made an example of him."

"So I made an example of them." He's crying now. Sherlock looks away. "Jesus. I can still smell it."

"And then the suggestion..."

"To help. No idea why. To save me? But all I think about is him, alone, surrounded by everything he hated. I did that. I did that."

_ Ix. what was good for our country was good for General Motors _

One more text brings the Yard. Lestrade isn't happy. Called away from a sweet vegetable curry, Sherlock can tell.

She asks "What's all this then?", playing the cliche, eyes too sharp, here too easy to not have already suspected a connection.

"Rich boyfriend, poor boyfriend, bad argument, convenient dumping ground." Sherlock shrugs. "You can fill in the blanks."

"Careful," Lestrade says. "That was almost a compliment. Might think I'm adequate."

"Delusions of grandeur, innit."

"Did you even ask his name?"

Sherlock is a mask. "Does it matter?"

"What about the dealers?"

"Crime on crime violence." Sherlock shrugs, already gone. "Boring."

_ x. biro pens that I wrote poems with I swallowed _

Night in London is purple-orange haze, devoid of stars. Empty except for the hope of darkness.

"Better sentenced for one you din't do, than twenty you did," John says eventually. "Shorter, anyway."

"One murderous manager beats 'our chemicals make the purest shit, shove it up yer nose'," Sherlock says. "Stock price'll barely wiggle."

Got played. Got an answer. Is there a difference? Someone always gets paid.

"Some fuck murders me, don't murder them all, right?" John says. "That's fucked up."

Sherlock laughs into the diminishing space between them, until they're pressed into each other so tight. Two, to one. Be.


End file.
